Sundown
by WET NOODLES
Summary: "Your skin is pale white and cold, you speak like you're from another time, and oh my God are you drinking hamburger juice with a straw?" Ike's not sure what sucks worse, new schools or primeval puns. Vampire AU.


A lot of these characters probably aren't teenagers in canon, so humor me and willfully age them down in your head, thank you.

Sweet Jesus why did I do this.

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><p>First Impressions<p>

The first thing I noticed when we stepped out of the Bellingham International Airport was that everything in Washington was green. Not like prickly-pronged-fern _chartreuse_, which was a pretty name for a hideous color, but lush, verdant, hardcore brown-green. Like God was painting a landscape, screwed up, said "fuck it" and smashed his palette all over the canvas.

It even smelled green, said Mist, but I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. The smell reminded me more of freshly upturned mulch, or wet hamster bedding.

Titania's cruiser wasn't hard to spot, and neither was her flaming hair that probably doubles as a reflector at night. She pulled us both into a hug, told us how much she's missed us, and took Mist's luggage for me, which was really all I cared about then. Travel is pretty exhausting. We stopped at a fast food place for drinks and ended up getting hot coffee because we were not really prepared for the sudden downpour that hit us just as we were pulling out of airport parking, no matter how many times Titania had told us about the weather here. Mist guessed we weren't going to have iced coffee weather for a while, before Titania informed us that "iced coffee weather" wasn't so much of a thing in Washington state. She also said that buying fast food coffee here is like getting Taco Bell in Tijuana, but I'm pretty sure she was joking on both counts. Titania liked to prod halfhearted laughs out of us with her terrible and occasionally nonsensical jokes, mostly to fill the awkward silence. No one wanted to talk about Dad; Mist was all cried out, Titania was probably all cried out, and I just wanted to use Mist's plush stuffed bird as a pillow and sleep in the car.

I kind of envied them. It was still weird, waking up to a world without Dad and having that realization slowly sink in every morning, while they were flying through the grieving process with all the grace and celerity of a violently sobbing trapezist.

It also got me thinking about the nature of human mortality, but that's pretty much immutable and I don't like dwelling in hypotheticals.

The rain and clumsy attempts at humor didn't let up when we reached Titania's house in Everson, Washington, modestly-sized, two stories, and creepily remote.

Well, it was Titania's house now. It had belonged to my parents when they were still around, but neither my Dad nor Titania were totally clear on the details of our move to Tucson; Dad had been renting it out to her before he died, but considering she's our godmother and legal guardian now, I'm guessing the property rights were bequeathed to her.

I let Mist tug me around on her reminiscing tour and tried to act like I knew what she was talking about.

"The tiles, the curtains, the yard… it's just like I remember it!"

Another thing I kind of envied: Mist's ability to retain early memories. I should mention that this was our childhood home. Or our first one; I mean, we moved pretty early on, from what I was told. Everything before Tucson was a haze. Mist once said I must have underwent some life-shattering trauma that was lurking in the depths of my subconscious like a fat, slithering lake monster, but I'm pretty sure that was one of her shitty stories talking.

We noticed the array of oscillating fans that adorned the house, but I didn't think much about it until Mist turned to Titania and asked, "Do we have AC?"

"Nope, just the SATs!" she quipped, but we were too drained to pretend-smile. Plus, I'm pretty sure that wasn't true.

She tried again.

"It might seem strange at first, but believe me, you won't miss it. You might miss the sun, though."

I thought she was kidding until the next morning, when she set two pills next to our plates and cheerfully informed us that they were vitamin D supplements. Which we washed down with glasses of gritty, diluted Sunny D. It made me feel like an alien plant surrounded by fussy botanists in lab coats and safety gear.

Titania took us to school in her cruiser, which probably would have drawn some unneeded attention if we hadn't gone "super early, pretty pretty please Titania!" So early that it was still close to dark by the time we got there; Nooksack Valley High School was off the highway, which made sense since three tiny cities had to share it. I was pretty sure there were more kids enrolled in my old Sahuaro High than residents in Sumas and Nooksack combined, and made a mental note to Google that when I got home.

I thought it was pretty, though. The front was overgrown with wildflowers, but I liked the glass panel wall and the general remoteness. Mist couldn't get over the name. Hah, Nooksack.

The lady at the office front desk greeted us warmly; she called Titania "chief". Oh yeah, small town. We would have to get used to that. I'm glad nobody else was there when Titania squashed a wet kiss against our foreheads because that was pretty weird, but I know she was just trying to be nice. Still, I kept rubbing at it while we looked for our classes and checking for lipstick residue. By the time we were nearly through, I saw kids pulling into the parking lot through the rust-flecked gates closing off the campus. All fairly modest, hand-me-down looking things, except for this silver Volvo, which I assumed belonged to someone's mother. Except when it turned, it didn't have that cutesy stick-figure family lineup on the rear window, and the person who stepped out on the driver's side was short enough to be a student and pretty gothy looking. But hey, I figured we had plenty of those back at SHS, and plenty of Mormons and probably some freaky hybrid of the two: I was going to do just fine here!

I might have been staring too long, because I think he noticed—he was wearing shades, so it was hard to tell. But I knew this for a fact once he did a double-take and went kind of still, like he was caught doing something incriminating. A deer in headlights, a dog mid-shit over your expensive tuxedo rental. I looked away in embarrassment and headed to my first class.

Going by the syllabus, it looked like English was covering a lot of material that I already knew: Shakespeare, Bronte… uh…

Okay, we had done Bronte but even I knew that my essay was a pretty pitiful attempt at analysis. _Wuthering Heights _bored the shit out of me and I was convinced that it was twice as long as it should have been and that Heathcliff and Catherine made a pretty dysfunctional, destructive pair.

I remember Mist looking over my D-paper and saying _holy shit Ike, that was the point._

Every new semester I tell myself that _this time _I'll stay on track, but that never lasts long. Maybe I'll make some studious friends, I told myself. More likely I was going to attract a circus of special snowflakes, because weird people seemed to be drawn to me. I'm not sure what it was.

The first person to talk to me gave a good impression. He acknowledged me with a smile across the room and took the desk beside me, removing the contents from his backpack before extending a hand my way.

"You're Ike, right? I heard a couple of kids moved in with the chief of police, and you seem to be the only new face around."

What the hell? Apparently small towners were psychically linked, like those blue cat people in Avatar.

Speaking of that, I didn't fail to notice the drawings of cartoon cat-ladies put on flagrant display in the plastic sleeve of the kid's binder, with snouts and tails and little blouses and everything. Who all held their hands—paws, I guess—behind their backs, which must have gotten pretty uncomfortable after a while.

"I'm Zihark," he said as I shook his hand. That was an unfortunate name, but not as unfortunate as "Nooksack".

"How are you liking Everson so far?"

He laughed when I admitted it was already wetter and colder than I was used to, and told me that small town hospitality tends to cozy you up. He also joked that people got exponentially nicer while approaching the Canadian border, which I still thought was pretty exotic.

The bell sounded and Zihark showed me the quick way to my next class, precalculus, and offered to meet up with me for lunch; he said he had a free period and could grab me a sub in the meantime. I accepted, stupidly surrendered a five dollar bill without a second thought, and said I liked avocado bacon. Didn't think he'd swindle me until a few minutes later, and by then I was already seated, and the teacher was keeping a pretty steady eye on me. Miss Callil was pretty and a little overdressed in all the weirdest places, and I briefly wondered if the staff even had to follow a certain dress code.

I wasn't that great at math, either; like I said, I don't like dwelling in hypotheticals. Miss Callil started us off with an icebreaker game, which I figured was mostly useless considering these kids had probably been confined to each other's hormone-drenched company for at least a decade, but she claimed it was an exercise in creativity, which advanced mathematics would eventually call for somehow.

It was that three-truths-and-a-lie game, and I sucked at it. Hi, my name is Ike. I did wrestling, I've never been out of the country, my favorite color is blue, and I make some mean lasagna. All hands shot up at the last one. Assholes.

Actually, everyone here was pretty nice. At noon, Zihark met me in the lunchroom and handed me my sandwich.

"I also went ahead and got you lemonade and a cookie, but I'll take 'em if you don't want it."

I liked Zihark.

Maybe it was just him, but this whole small town hospitality deal wasn't as awkward as I imagined it was going to be. We sat with his friends, and they seemed fairly laid back, though a bit "off"? They were also all girls, not that I minded. Mia introduced herself first; she was the loudest of the group and laughed at inappropriate times. Which was weird, because it wasn't like, fake laughing, she just found me extremely funny. Meg had a nice smile, Ilyana looked incredibly baked, and Nephenee had a hilarious name and an even more hilarious Arkansas accent—which made me feel a lot better about my whole position as the "newcomer".

I saw Mist talking with a redheaded girl across the room, so I got her attention with a wave. She waved back, and they started working their way through the throngs of students.

"Oh my God," Mia laughed, but she sounded more worried than amused this time. "Is that your sister?"

"Yeah, why?"

"That's Jill Fizzart she's with," she said, and by the way she looked at me, I think that name was supposed to be significant to me somehow. Like, she was so menacing that it struck fear in the hearts of unwitting Arizonan high schoolers a couple thousand miles away.

"Who?"

But it was too late; social Armageddon was upon us in the shape of Ginger Voldemort, who probably pissed them off for something stupid, like daring them to sled down a mudslide in a lubed-up garbage lid or whatever kids did for fun up here. Except when I talked to her she didn't seem like the wild type, just a polite, sort of uptight girl who actually said shit like "it's a pleasure to meet you" to her adolescent peers; I felt alright about her showing my sister around. Until they turned to leave. Jill glanced back. And she gave Zihark a Look. It made me want to leap over the table and yank my sister in a shielding, paranoid embrace and whisper comforting words into her hairline.

Everyone waited until they were well out of earshot before Mia picked up where we left off.

"Jill is _crazy racist._"

"What?"

"Yeah, it's pretty awful," said Zihark. "Because otherwise she was a decent person. Like we hung out and got along just fine until—well, we fell out."

I decided not to pry.

"Total bigot," Mia said, picking olives from the moist, squelching lips of her sandwich.

"Sure is," agreed Nephenee.

"She shyeeeeeeur be, hyuck!"

"Mia, that's really not necessary."

When I checked out some of the other kids in the room, one table caught my eye. It was situated in the far corner, and though I couldn't make a whole lot out, one feature jumped out at me. I watched as the gothy Mormon guy from earlier picked up a water bottle, brought the cap to his teeth, and twisted it open.

"Holy shit, that guy has red eyes."

My entire table stopped eating, looked at me. Slowly, Zihark turned his head in the other table's direction, and nodded almost nonchalantly. As if to say "Yeah, Washington has those too".

"Oh, you haven't seen Soren yet," Mia said.

"I had. Earlier this morning, just… not the eyes."

Ilyana blinked—so slowly and so sagely, one eyelid and then the other.

"He's… like… part-albino, or something."

"Ilyana you ignorant sack of shit, there's no such thing." Mia liked to swear for no real reason. "He's photophobic or something, like he wears these goofy prescription shades even when it's dark out. I also think he's autistic?"

"Mia," Zihark warned.

"Also those two he's with, Sothe and Miciah, are siblings and also, you know, 'together'."

"Goddammit Mia, you are really unsubtle and I bet they're looking at us now, aren't they."

"Yeah."

I saw that their heads were turned in our general direction and that, for once, I could actually sustain eye-contact with the one I saw earlier. It was actually less unsettling than the blank stare of the sunglasses—I didn't have to second-guess myself, for one. I assumed new kids were more of a novelty at smaller schools and didn't mind them sizing me up, though they looked away the moment I gave them a smile of acknowledgement. It was already awkward and I had figured I'd go the full mile.

"Ike, are you antagonizing them?"

"No?" I looked back to Mia. "Why? Is smiling against their religion?"

Okay, it was a dumb question and the whole table rightfully laughed me off, but I was still left mystified. Maybe they were Old Money—backwater missionaries with a chip on their shoulder. Except then I was informed that they weren't affiliated with any specific religion… and from Alaska, not Utah. So I was clueless again.

They didn't appear to be eating. I suddenly felt creepy for watching so long.

Lunch ended, and I told them I could find my next class, biology, easily enough. None of them shared it with me anyway.

It was an awful idea, because I ended up going the opposite direction of sunglasses guy because of the vibes I got, or was giving off, and that turned out to be a mistake. I did a loop around a building, came up to a gauntlet of erratically-numbered doors, and eventually found my mark around the corner, so unobtrusive that I mistook it for a storage closet at first.

And when I walked in, everyone felt the need to check over their shoulders at Johnny-come-fifty-seconds-lately. Everyone except for a single student, on a stool towards the side, hunched over a black-surfaced, eraser-scruffed table. It was Volvo guy.

And oh God, there was only one spot left, and of course it was at that very table. And just standing there would have been even more embarrassing, so I ducked through the aisle and accepted my fate.

"Hey," I whispered, grabbing the stool next to his.

I don't think he heard me, and when the teacher cleared her throat and shot him a meaningful look, I realized he was wearing earbuds and his hair was hiding it. In fact, it was hiding most of his face, from where I sat, and the fact that he never even turned his head to acknowledge me confirmed that I was being deliberately ignored.

It was really awkward, and I spent most of the class running through my possible transgressions. Did I smell?

It couldn't have been my deodorant that evokes the scent of an Irish pirate dousing himself with whiskey while wading waist-deep in the cool, herb-tinted ocean shallows of the North Atlantic—or something like that, the label on the back just told me it was damn manly. Guy probably just didn't get it.

On the other hand, he smelled kind of subdued and musty, but I did catch a hint of spice and wow I was being really creepy. I stewed in my discomfort for the rest of the class and didn't cross eyes with him when we stood to left, because I was fairly sure I had done something to piss him off.

It wasn't until Titania picked us up later that day that I realized how _stupid _that was. I didn't do _anything_.

Though people've told me it's annoying when I bat a pencil around and pretend I'm playing an aggressive match of air hockey with myself, so maybe that ticked him off. Maybe he was having a bad day? An existential crisis? Why was this bothering me so much? I interact with assholes on a near-daily basis and this one was no different, though he did raise a host of questions that I'd be looking into if this were some sort of stalkery romance movie, except for the romance part.

I didn't bring it up back at home.

"Jill's family is like a bunch of vets!" Mist chirped as I flipped through the channels.

"Really?"

"Well I don't know really, but it sounded like it! She gives the time like a soldier or like how we learned to do in French class, like oh-nine-hundred and she's really physically fit and looked super toned in the locker room, but she didn't talk about it much so I'm just guessing."

"Oh. Okay."

To me, she just sounded a little awkward, but I was glad my sister was making friends the first day. Also, the locker room part raised some alarms.

"She said something weird about that guy you were sitting with, though, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say…"

"Wait, Zihark?"

I stopped flipping and it landed on a guy cramming a hotdog down his throat like he was making love to an Italian opera singer. Man v. Food fascinated me, but usually I couldn't keep it running with Mist around.

"Yeah, that they used to hang out together until… he started dating this girl," she said over the man's soft moans of elation. I could tell she didn't notice because she wasn't gagging, so this must have been pretty important.

"I don't know, it was weird. She said she belonged to a family of crime lords, so I guess like the mafia? And then she was like, 'no, a pack of _savages_' and I was like, 'ooookay then' and then she told me about this awesome seafood place in Bellingham. Ike, can we change this?"

I realized she meant the channel, so I just turned it over to the news.

"Well, that's weird," I told her, and then I decided to lie through my teeth. "She seems nice enough."

Titania came in before Mist could call out my bullshitting.

"Children!" she said in that sing-song voice that she used when she was trying too hard to be nice. She had a phone in her hand and she still hadn't changed out of her uniform.

"Do you remember Uncle Caineghis?"

Oh shit. I'm pretty sure I've had nightmares about moments like these.

Not about Uncle Whatshisface, but meeting close family friends who I've completely forgotten about over the past decade and a half.

I must have looked pretty affected, because Titania laughed and placed a hand on my shoulder.

"The last time you saw him, you were about this big," she said, indicating the height with her other hand. "Anyway, he gave me a call just now. He's got a present for you."

For some reason, this made me feel quite a bit sicker, and I couldn't place why. Watching a biker pick chunks of onion and mayonnaise out of his goatee seemed like a more pleasant alternative at the time. That's how bizarre my day had been.


End file.
